The God Project

by John Saul

  “Well, at least he has orange juice in the morning,” the nurse said by way of an apology.

  “Let’s get some more water down there.”

  They repeated the lavage process until Tony was throwing up nothing more than the clear water they were pumping into him. “Okay,” Malone said at last “Clean him up, and keep an eye on him, while I go talk to his mother.” Without waiting for a reply, he strode out to the lobby area, where Aria Phelps was working on her fourth cigarette.

  “Is he going to be all right?”

  “He’s still alive,” Malone told her. Tell me exactly what happened. “I need to know exactly what he drank, and how much.”

  “It was Lysol,” Arla told him. “I’m not sure how much, but I think it must have been a lot.”

  “What do you mean by a lot?”

  “Half a bottle,” the unhappy woman whispered.

  Malone’s eyes widened in surprise. “Half a bottle?” It was unbelievable. The first swallow should have been enough to make even a two-year-old choke and start screaming. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I was only out of the kitchen a few minutes. Doctor, he’s never done anything like that before—never! But when I came back in, he was sitting on the floor, holding the bottle in his hands, drinking it just like it was pop.”

  Malone thought furiously. If he was to avert a disaster, he had to act quickly and make no mistakes. “Just a minute,” he said. He went back to the treatment room, intent on having the contents of Tony Phelps’s stomach analyzed.

  But when he got there, the emergency seemed to have passed. Tony Phelps, sitting up on the examining table, was giggling happily while the nurse teased him. Malone stood at the door and stared.

  “Suzy?” he raid at last.

  The nurse turned and grinned at him. “Still the world’s most perfect child.”

  “So I see,” Malone said. “Do me a favor, will you? Have the lab check out the contents of his stomach to see if there’s anything there besides orange juice. I have a feeling our young Mr. Phelps may be playing a bad joke on all of us.”

  As the nurse hurried out of the room, bearing the bowl and its contents, Mark Malone picked up the gurgling child and held him high in the air. “Is that what you’re doing, Tony? Playing a game on us?”

  “Where’s Mommy?” the little boy asked.

  “Right out here.” Malone carried Tony out to the lobby and turned him over to Arla, who looked up at him anxiously as she took her son.

  “Is he all right?”

  “Apparently. But I’d just as soon you stayed around for a while. I’m having the lab check out just what it was that he swallowed.”

  Twenty minutes later, a laboratory technician appeared, his face a mask. He signaled to Malone, then went into the treatment room. Malone followed.

  “I don’t know what’s with that kid,” the technician said softly. “He must have swallowed at least twelve ounces of straight Lysol. You ask me, he should be dead.”

  So the crisis wasn’t over after all.

  For Mark Malone, it promised to be a long day, and a difficult one.

  Chapter 21

  FOR THE FIRST TIME in five years, Sally Montgomery wished she had a cigarette. The problem, she knew, was her hands. If she only had something to do with them, perhaps she wouldn’t feel so nervous.

  She was lying to herself, and she knew it.

  It was Dr. Wiseman who was making her nervous, with his calm eyes and placid expression, his understanding smile and his low-pitched voice.

  She had been listening to him for half an hour while Steve waited outside.

  All he really wanted, he kept insisting, was for her to talk to someone—a stranger, someone who had never met her before and knew nothing about her. A stranger who would listen to her objectively and then try to help her sort things out. Perhaps, Wiseman even admitted, this stranger might actually agree with her that something was “going on,” and his fears for her would prove groundless.

  Or perhaps, Sally thought, your friend will be one more voice hammering at me to stop worrying, face reality, and go on with my life. Isn’t that what you all say? That I should bury my head in the sand? Pretend nothing’s happening? She felt indignation rising up from the pit of her stomach, flooding through her like a riptide. threatening to tear away the veneer of false serenity in which she had wrapped herself.

  “Would you like something?” she heard Wiseman saying.

  “No—no, nothing at all,” Sally said a little too quickly. She forced a smile. “I’m afraid I was just regressing a bit, wishing I had a cigarette.” She bit her lower lip, regretting her words even as she spoke them. “It happens every now and then, but I always resist.”

  “Just as you’re resisting me now?” Wiseman said, lounging back in his chair and smiling genially.

  Exactly, Sally thought. Aloud she said, “I didn’t know I was resisting you. I didn’t think I needed to. Do I?”

  “I don’t see why.” He leaned forward, folding his hands and resting them on his desk. “We’ve known each other for a long time, Sally. If you can’t trust me, and you can’t trust Steve, whom can you trust? You seem to have decided that for some reason we’ve turned against you.”

  Sally frowned in studied puzzlement. “I do? I’m sorry if I’ve given you that impression. I’ve listened to every word you’ve said.”

  “And dismissed them,” Wiseman replied. “Sally, I’m your doctor. I’ve known you for ten years, but I’m sitting here talking to a stranger. Don’t you want me to help you?”

  Sally felt her guard slip just a little. Did he really want to help her? “Of course I want you to help me. But I want you to help me with my problem, and you only want to help me with what you think is my problem. I’m not crazy, Dr. Wiseman—”

  “No one has said you are.”

  Sally’s resolve crumbled around her, and all the feelings she had been struggling to control boiled to the surface. “Everyone has said so.” The words burst out of Sally, and there was nothing she could do to stop them. “I keep hearing it from everyone—you, Steve, my mother, even the neighbors are starting to look at me strangely. ‘Oh, dear, here comes poor Sally—you know, ever since her baby died, she’s been a little odd.’ By next week, they’ll be crossing the street to get away from me. But I’m not crazy, Dr. Wiseman. I’m not crazy, and neither is Lucy Corliss. Do you remember her, Dr. Wiseman? You probably don’t, but you did the same thing to her that you did to me, and to Jan Ransom, and to God-only-knows how many other women. We didn’t want children, so you gave us IUDs. But we had children anyway—for a while. But mine died, and Jan’s died, and Lucy’s is gone. Is that your kind of birth control? After the fact?”

  She started sobbing in fury and frustration. She was dimly aware of Wiseman getting up and moving from behind his desk to lay a gentle hand on her shoulder.

  “Sally,” she heard him say, “I tried to explain it to you at the time. IUDs don’t always work. Sometimes your body rejects them. There’s nothing I can do about that.”

  Sally shook his hand away and rose to face him. “Isn’t there? I wonder, Dr. Wiseman. I wonder if there’s nothing you could have done, or if there’s something you did do. And I’ll find out! You can’t stop me, Dr. Wiseman. Not you, not Steve, not my mother, none of you!” The last vestiges of her control, the control she had nurtured all day, dipped away from her. She stumbled toward the door, grasping at the knob. It stuck, and for a frightening moment she wondered if she had been locked in. But then it turned in her hand and she pulled it open, lurching into the waiting room. Steve, on his feet, reached out to her, but she brushed him aside. As quickly as it had deserted her, her self-control returned. She glared at her husband. “Leave me alone,” she said coldly. “Just leave me alone.” And then she was gone.

  Sudden silence hung in the air for a moment, and then Steve heard Arthur Wiseman’s voice. “You’d better come in, Steve. I think we need to talk.”

  Numbly, Steve
allowed himself to be led into the inner office. Wiseman guided him to the chair that Sally had just vacated, then closed the door. He waited while Steve settled into the chair, speaking only after the young man seemed to have recovered from his wife’s outburst.

  “You heard?”

  “Only Sally, and only at the end. My God, what happened in here?”

  “I’m not exactly sure,” Wiseman said thoughtfully. “I talked to her, and for the first few minutes I thought she was listening to me. And then I had the strangest feeling she’d just sort of clicked off, shutting me out. It was as if she was only willing to listen to what she wanted to hear.” He paused, then went on. “And then at the end, when I asked if she wanted our help—well, you heard her. She lost control.”

  “Oh, God,” Steve groaned. “What am I going to do?”

  Wiseman’s fingers drummed on the desk top. “I’m not positive, Steve, but it seems to me that Sally’s on the edge of a major collapse. I hate to suggest it, but I think it might be wise if she had a good rest. Not for a long time, but for a week or two at least. Get her out of Eastbury, away from everything that might remind her of Julie.”

  “I suppose I could get away for a while,” Steve mused.

  “That’s not what I meant,” Wiseman said quietly. “I think Sally needs to be by herself in an environment that’s structured for people with her kind of problem.”

  Steve reluctantly met Wiseman’s steady gaze. “You mean a mental hospital.”

  “I think it might be best.”

  Steve shook his head. “She won’t agree to go.”

  Wiseman’s fingers stopped drumming, and he picked up a pencil. “It isn’t always necessary that—well, that the patient agree.”

  Steve swallowed hard, trying to dissolve the lump that had formed in his throat “I—I’m not sure I could do that.”

  “If it’s best for Sally, I’m not sure either of us has a choice,” Wiseman countered.

  Steve took a deep breath and shifted his weight forward in the chair. Surely, there was a better way. “Do we have to decide now?” he asked at last.

  “This minute? No. But it shouldn’t be put off too long. Unless Sally gets some help, I don’t know how far she might go with this thing. And I can’t tell you what effect it might have on your son either.”

  It was the mention of Jason, coupled with the memory of the morning, that made up Steve’s mind.

  “All right,” he said, his shoulders sagging with defeat. “Let’s go find her.”

  Sally paused in the corridor and took a deep breath. She had her control back, and no matter what happened, she must not lose it again.

  Not in front of Wiseman, and not in front of Steve.

  But who was left for her to talk to?

  Her world, the world that only two weeks ago had seemed limitless, had suddenly narrowed to three people: Lucy and Jim Corliss, and Carl Bronski.

  Three people she barely knew.

  But three people who believed in her.

  She moved through the corridor quickly, intent only on getting out of the clinic, getting to her friends. She was almost through the lobby when she suddenly heard her name.

  “Mrs. Montgomery?” the voice said again. It was a familiar voice, but still Sally had to curb her impulse to run. She turned to face the speaker.

  It was Dr. Malone, and his brows were furrowed with worry. He was watching her intently. “Is something wrong?” he asked, his voice solicitous.

  Sally glanced at a window and caught a vague reflection of herself. Her hair looked messy and her face drawn. She made herself smile. “I’m fine, Dr. Malone. I was just on my way home.”

  But Malone shook his head. “You’re not fine, Mrs. Montgomery. Something’s upsetting you. Won’t you tell me what it is?”

  “I—” Sally’s eyes flickered nervously over the lobby. “I really have a great deal to do—”

  “Does it have something to do with what happened on Monday?” Malone pressed.

  Monday. Monday. Sally’s memory churned, trying to sort things out What was he talking about? And then she remembered. Jason’s arm. “What about it?” she asked coldly.

  Malone moved closer to her and Sally took a step backward. He stopped, sensing that she was on the verge of running. “You still think the burns were worse than they looked, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Sally admitted. “But nobody else does. Something’s going on, Dr. Malone, and I’m going to find out what it is. No one’s going to stop me. No one’s going to convince me that I’m crazy. So please, just let me go.”

  Malone stood silently for a moment, wishing he knew Sally Montgomery better. Was she budding under the strain of losing her baby, or had she really stumbled onto something? He decided he’d better find out.

  “I don’t think you’re crazy,” he said at last “I think things on Monday happened exactly the way you told it Burns and all,” he added, seeing the suspicion in Sally’s eyes.

  “Thank you,” Sally breathed, moving toward the door. “I really have to—”

  “I think we ought to talk, Mrs. Montgomery,” Malone said quietly. He watched Sally carefully, sure that if he said the wrong thing, she would bolt. “Could we talk in my office? I promise we won’t be disturbed. By anyone.” Sally still hesitated. “There’s a door from my office directly into the parking lot. Your car is right next to it That’s how I knew you were here.” He moved toward her, and again she backed away. “In fact, why don’t we go through the parking lot? Then if you still don’t want to come into my office, you can just leave.”

  Sally was silent for a moment, then nodded her head in agreement. The two of them left the lobby and began walking along the side of the building.

  “Something happened today, Mrs. Mont—is it all right if I call you Sally?”

  She nodded, but said nothing.

  “The same kind of thing happened again today, Sally. A woman brought in her son, and from what she said, the little boy should have been dead. Not just burned-dead. But nothing was wrong with him.”

  Sally stopped and turned to face Malone. She looked deep into his eyes. Was he telling the truth, or was it some kind of trap? Maybe he was just trying to delay her, trying to keep her here until—what? And yet, there was nothing in his eyes to suggest that he was lying to her. “Was the boy being surveyed by CHILD?”

  Malone hesitated for a moment, then nodded.

  They were near Sally’s car now, and she began fishing in her purse for her keys. “Then if I were you, I’d keep a very careful eye on that boy,” she said. “And I’d bet money that his mother hadn’t planned to have him, and that Dr. Wiseman was his mother’s doctor.”

  Malone knew it was all true. He reached out and touched Sally’s arm. This time she didn’t draw away.

  “Come in for a minute. Please?” He went to the outside door of his office, unlocked it, and went in. Through the window Sally watched him cross to the other door, turn the bolt, then rattle it to prove to her that it was locked. At last, conquering her fear, she went inside.

  Mark Malone talked steadily for ten minutes, and when he was done, Sally sighed heavily. “And there’s no mistake? The Lysol should have killed him?”

  Malone nodded. “If not, he should have been in so much pain that he would have been unconscious. He wasn’t He was mad as hops about the way he was being treated, but as soon as the lavage was finished, he was fine. And there was no mistake about how much of the stuff he’d drunk. He’d gone through it like root beer, and for the amount of damage it did, it might as well have been root beer.”

  The intercom on Malone’s desk suddenly crackled, and the voice of Arthur Wiseman filled the room. “Mark, it’s Arthur. Have you happened to see Sally Montgomery anywhere around the hospital?”

  Malone glanced quickly at Sally, who shook her head vehemently. “No.”

  “Damn. Okay. If you see her, talk to her, and keep talking to her until I get to you.”

  “Why? Is something wrong?”
>
  There was a short silence, then he said, “She’s been having some problems, Mark. Her husband and I have decided she needs some help, but she doesn’t agree. I’m afraid we’re going to have to take the decision out of her hands.”

  Sally was on her feet and at the door to the parking lot by the time the intercom fell silent.

  “Sally?” She paused and turned back to face him. “If I’m going to help you, I have to know where you’ll be.” She stared at him, and he knew that even now she didn’t quite trust him. “Just a name,” he said softly. “Don’t argue, and don’t waste time thinking. Just give me a name and get out of here.”

  “Lucy Corliss,” Sally said.

  “I’ll be there tonight,” Mark promised. “We have a lot to talk about” But by the time he’d finished speaking, Salty was gone. He moved to the window and watched as her car skidded out of the parking lot and disappeared down Prospect Street. Only then did he unlock his office door and hurry down the corridor toward Arthur Wiseman’s office.

  Louise Bowen paused for a moment on the lawn of the Academy to watch the three boys playing some kind of game with a ball. Although she didn’t quite understand the point of the game, she could see that it was rough. The idea seemed to be to retain possession of the ball, but with the odds two against one, the game had the appearance of a constantly shifting wrestling match in which there could be no winner until all but one of the boys dropped in exhaustion.

  Only Randy Corliss was not playing, and it was Randy in whom Louise was primarily interested.

  She knew that what had happened yesterday afternoon was preying heavily on Randy’s mind. He had been quieter than usual at breakfast. Then at lunch, while the rest of the boys wrangled about how to spend the afternoon, he had remained completely silent, his expression blank, as if he were somewhere far away, in a world of his own. And then, after lunch, he had disappeared. Now Louise was looking for him, determined to do what she could to assuage his fears.